How to select a language to spell-check entire document?

English
#1

In LibreOffice Writer 7.6 (on MacOS) I want to spell check a German text, so I go to

“Tool” → “Language” → “For All Text”

and select the entry “German {de}”.

Then I click on

“Tools” → “Spelling…”

and in the popup window no language is selected.

Looking again at

“Tool” → “Language” → “For All Text”

no language is selected.

So how to select the German pack to spell check a text in German?

#2
  1. Ctrl + A to select the entire text.
  2. Choose the required language via the language selector in the status bar.
#3

and then? I do not see it working, and there are words that are incorrect for German.

And why do the Tools method not work? This seems like a major bug to me

#4

Is a German dictionary installed?

#5

How do I know if a German dictionary is installed? If it is not installed, I should not be able to select it.

Anyway, how can I check if a German dictionary is installed?

#6

Go to Tools>Options (you didn’t mention your OS; in case you’re under MacOS, go to Preferences), then Language Settings>Writing Aids. There you see installed “engines” (aka. language Modules), dictionaries (installed and enabled) and various options.

As an alternative to selecting your text and assigning it a language, you can:

  • Tools>Options, Language Settings>Languages and set your preferred language
    This configuration influences future documents if you untick the ad-hoc checkbox.
  • or modify Default Paragraph Style paragraph style Font tab
    A drop-down menu defines the language for such paragraphs. Since Default Paragraph Style is the ancestor of all other built-in styles, your choice cascades down to all others.
    If you want this setting to be permanent, you must modify the default template Default Paragraph Style or create a user-template with this modification and make your user-template the default one.
#7

Yes it is under MacOS. I see “User-defined Dictionaries” but I do not see any “engines”…?

#8

Under “LibreOffice” → “Preferences” → “Language Settings” → “Languages” I see a window and under the section “Default Languages for Documents” I see

Western: German {de}

I have no idea what ““western”” means. For me a “western” is a movie genre (usually playing in the wild west of the US with horses etc.)

#9

I used word “engines” with intentional quotes as a gneric name for spell checker, thesaurus add-on, hyphenator. These are listed in Available Language Modules.

“Western” is also an adjective conveying a geographical idea. Writer is a very powerful document processor. It can handle Western languages (i.e. mainly European languages based on Latin, Greek and Cyrillic alphabets), but also more complex scripts like those RTL “oriental” languages (Arabic & variants, Hebrew) as well as those found in Asia (Indian subcontinent, South-Easr Asia = Chinese, Japanese, Korean).
Therefore, “Western” identifies the script family, German the language and de the variant.

I highly recommend you read the Writer Guide or re-read it if you have done so for a while, preferably the latest edition.

#10

Thanks for the explanation on “Western”. I now also found Available Language Modules. Thanks for telling me how this section is actually named…

In that section I do not see “German”. So it does not seem to be installed, but I can choose it in Tools → Language → For Selection/Paragraph/All Text. That clearly is a bug I will report.

So in that sectionAvailable Language Modules I do not see “German” so I click on Edit. In the new popup box there is no button “New” or "Installed, but on the bottom there is a link Get more dictionaries online. So I click on that.

In the new window I search for “German” but I see that a “German Spellchecker” is already installed.
I also can select “German (Germany)” from the dropdown, but there is no button “Add”. Not sure what this dropdown box is for. Also the click on “Reset” does not do anything visible.

That brings me back to my original question: How can I spell check a text in German?

#11

This is not a bug at all. It is OK that you can select any of hundreds (even thousands) of languages / locales on Earth, even those that LibreOffice doesn’t know at all (if you directly use its tag) - because these languages are needed not only for spell checking. Valid reasons to use a language / locale on text include:

  • Hyphenation;
  • External text-to-speech applications that may have that language;
  • Formatting of numbers / dates - e.g., in fields;
  • Export to PDF/UA, which requires all text parts correctly tagged with their languages;
  • Use of grammar checkers;
  • Telling LibreOffice to not check spelling for (some part of) text;
    … and so on.
#12

That behavior is totally confusing and non-intuitive. And needs to be fixed. Why list thousand of languages even I cannot select them for spell checking? That does not make any sense…

In addition, I still cannot spell check in German!

#13

You seem to not read / try to understand. Some of the alternative reasons “why” are listed above.

#14

Valid reasons for me to use a spell checker is to spell check a text!

But again, I am still not able to spell check a German text!
Can anyone help me fix this issue or not?

#15

Confusing? Perhaps. Non-intuitive? Not at all. “Intuition” is a namesake for something conforming to our long-standing routine, acquired through our basic training (family, local social habits, education, reading, …). When it comes to computers, there are very few generally agreed conventions (such as Ctrl+C,V or X) but when it comes to application programs, all the more which such complex modern document processing, nothing is “intuitive” until you have read the documentation (yes, it exists for Writer) and totally understood the underlying principles.

#16

If it is not confusing at all then please explain how I can spell-check a text in German! Why not just explain how to do that instead of evading my actual question?

#17

It is for OpenOffice but the principles should be the same.

Troubleshooting Spell check in OpenOffice

#18

Finally! Thanks!!!

#19

Need to put that link into a WELL KNOWN place because I will need it again and again because the language setup in LibreOffice IS very confusing!

#20

I believe they are called browser bookmarks.

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